


i didn't have it in myself to go with grace

by godblesscicero



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Post-Shadow of Kyoshi, also fire nationals' obsession with hair, and a couple of supporting others, and some sadness because Kyoshi lived to be 230 after all, gratuitous kissing and tender touches, just an excuse to write Rangshi kissing many times, rated T for innuendos i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:54:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25954072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/godblesscicero/pseuds/godblesscicero
Summary: “Did you blackmail the Fire Lord?”“No! Why would you say that! I would never.”Rangi gives her a hard stare. She might be the Avatar’s wife, but she’s also a devoted Fire Nation citizen and a loyal subject to the Crown. Kyoshi supposes she deserves the truth. After all, they’ve done worse things together. Maybe.“I slightly threatened him.”-Many things happen during one's life, butmanymany things happen during the two hundred and thirty years of Kyoshi's. Mainly loving Rangi, but some others, too.
Relationships: Kyoshi/Rangi (Avatar)
Comments: 38
Kudos: 230





	i didn't have it in myself to go with grace

Kyoshi has come to hate Pai Sho.

There doesn’t seem to be a relevant political figure in the whole world that doesn’t take delight in playing the tedious game. Despite that, she still can’t bring herself to learn how to play the damned thing.

The most irritating thing is that, while the number of people that still challenge the newest Avatar’s authority and cunning has become increasingly low after the barely avoided civil war in the Fire Nation, Pai Sho is _still_ being used as a way to gauge one’s competence in important matters such as politics or overall strategy. Even the Avatar’s.

So, if an astute player makes for an enlightened leader and a lousy player makes for a shortsighted one, the simple fact that one does not play the game is an insult to their intelligence.

Even in the coldest places of the world, where one would think that playing something that requires the parties to sit still for hours would be strongly advised against, one of the advisors of the Northern Water Tribe had tried to ask Kyoshi if she played.

The embarrassed glances of the other people in the room had been enough to make her want to smash every Pai Sho board in the four nations. The advisor had been so ashamed, shortly after, and had made all kinds of excuses towards the Avatar. Like it was a delicate topic. Like Kyoshi must have known, along with everybody else, how shameful it was, not to be a decent player of the stupid game.

“Hello, Kyoshi,” the Spirit World’s intricate surroundings still aren’t something Kyoshi’s accustomed to, but the voice of her predecessor doesn’t make her anxiety spike anymore, “how are you faring these days?”

Surprisingly, she thinks, not bad enough to warrant a comment. The world has somehow decided to give her a break, but she doesn’t know how long it’ll last.

“I have been sleeping in the same bed for two weeks. No international incidents or no impending wars.”

Kuruk’s smile looks easy, but Kyoshi knows it really is not. Nevertheless, he looks truly happy about the scarce news.

“So you’ve come for a courtesy visit!” The man claps his hands together, delighted, but stops in thought shortly after. “Or maybe for advice about women?”

Kyoshi snorts. She has left Rangi after more than a few words of love, contentedly sleeping in what has become their bed back at the firebender’s home on her native island. To leave that warm nest is maybe the hardest thing Kyoshi has done in months.

“None of that,” is her short answer, though she tries to put some humor into it. Kuruk’s interest seems piqued.

“Teach me how to play Pai Sho.”

*

It should be easy, getting used to peace, even one that’s probably not going to last long, but it isn’t. Kyoshi ponders whether some of the monks would be willing to spar with her, or, to put it more truthfully, to be used as training targets as they scramble around to escape her nervousness-induced elemental wrath.

The Southern Air Temple crawls with easy, comfortable life. Kyoshi has loved only one Air Monk as a father, and she’s come to like even the second Southern-raised airbender in her life like a brother more than a secretary, but she’s not sure she can stand all the others.

“You’re nervous?” Rangi’s voice cuts through the fog of her thoughts.

“I’m impatient. How do days pass, here? The celebration is tonight. We arrived this morning. How come _a month_ has passed in my head?” She gets up from her lonely seat in front of the window – a hole on the wall where the wind gets channeled in strong bursts that enter the room periodically, lowering the temperature in a very unpleasant way. Luckily, they’re both firebenders.

“Usually it’s me freaking out about meetings, not you. As a very overeager person, I suggest that you walk up and down in the room.”

Kyoshi looks at her. She’s smiling a funny smile.

“You’re not helping.”

“But!” Rangi sounds honestly confused, this time. “I thought that you were an expert in waiting and watching things unravel.”

“I am. But that is the perfect strategy for dealing with _your_ folks. A fight between someone that attacks and someone that doesn’t want to is still a fight. A fight between someone that flees and someone that does nothing is ridiculous.” Kyoshi sits in front of the firebender like a crumbling mountain comes down on itself. Sitting like this, one in front of the other with their legs crossed, they look much younger.

“Conversation with the Council used to result in long lasting silences because neither of us could come up with anything. Why do you think Jinpa and I became... friends? He was the only one that didn’t excuse himself after a minute of conversation.”

Thanks to the months together alone with the Avatar, Jinpa had become even snappier than he was back then. At least, Kyoshi muses, she has him and a firebender lieutenant to keep the conversation flowing this evening. She tells Rangi so. The girl sits straight, making a solemn promise not to let the talking die down for more than five seconds at a time.

If Kyoshi didn’t know her, she’d think she was joking. Of course, Rangi is perfectly serious.

“I know you’ll be worried until the end of our stay here, but that can’t be avoided,” she adds, taking her hands in her own and squeezing them. “But in the meantime, I can try to take your mind off things.”

Kyoshi perks up just as Rangi lets her hands go to turn around. Swiftly, as if it was the most inconsequential action, she takes the pin out of her hair, letting it fall on her shoulders.

“Do you want to learn how to make a topknot?”

Before she can even answer, Kyoshi’s hands fly to the black, soft strands of hair, and ‘ _please_ ’ is the sole word she can get out.

It takes some time, and it really takes Kyoshi’s mind off of their whole Avatar business at the Temple – in fact, she might even begin to enjoy their time there, with the leaves shuffling in the wind and the wind chimes scattered all across the enormous building culling Kyoshi’s tender gestures with their clinking sounds. Rangi seems to relax, too, to the point of deciding to lay down to rest on the Avatar’s chest.

Kyoshi doesn’t waste much time before curling around her, kissing her forehead and her nose, then moving downwards to her lips. The pin in Rangi’s hand pokes Kyoshi’s ear as the firebender raises her arms to run her fingers through the girl’s hair, too, but Kyoshi doesn’t bring herself to care.

“Mmmh,” is her very smart comment. Rangi smiles on her lips, before tugging on her hair to move away.

“Don’t get distracted,” she whispers, as if Kyoshi’s the one that started the whole kissing and caressing business in the first place. She sits up again. “Try again,” and she offers her the pin. Kyoshi would like to throw it out of the window and into the bushes, but she puts it between her lips instead.

Just as Kyoshi gathers the other’s hair in her hands, ready to go through the motions for the hundredth time, Jinpa knocks at the door and _very stupidly_ enters without waiting for an answer.

Kyoshi thought she had finally grasped the true meaning of hair for Fire Nationals. The honor, the respect. The no-touching. The pins. She thought so optimistically, and she was very, very wrong.

Rangi lets out an embarrassed screech, throwing the first thing that’s at her disposal (which is her shoe), and as always she doesn’t miss her mark. Jinpa is quick to cover himself and the hit doesn’t hurt as much as it could’ve, but before he can ask for forgiveness he’s chased out by the second shoe.

The hair pin is still between Kyoshi’s lips after the whole ordeal. She blinks confusedly a few times and gives it back to the owner, after cleaning it on her robes.

“What was that about?”

The glare she receives is enough to wilt flowers and make her past three lives embarrassed about every one of their accomplishments, too.

“We were having a _very_ private moment.” Kyoshi can’t help the way her brow knits comically.

If this is the way Rangi reacts when people walk in on Kyoshi brushing her hair, then an execution is probably the punishment for walking in on them in more compromising situations. She can’t keep the humor out of her next question.

“Enough to warrant two shoes?”

The firebender is holding one of those right now, having gotten up to retrieve it, and she looks just like the rightful wrath of a powerful spirit: amber eyes, proud stance, vibrant red robes against the pale, naked walls of the Air Temple. The wind tunnels through the window, making her hair move dramatically.

“What, you want your share too?”

Kyoshi laughs out loud and quickly ducks to avoid the shoe.

*

Rangi kicks the door of the room closed, her whole body trembling with unreleased anger. Just a few minutes have passed since the moment when Kyoshi excused herself from dinner – after having eaten an amount of food that not even the firebender could consider scarce.

It tasted foul in her mouth, though.

The fight had been going as their fights usually go, not a pleasant affair, but not a dangerous one, either. And then, just as a bandit was getting too close to Wong, Kyoshi had for some reason hesitated to blow him away in one way or the other.

Rangi’s voice is still ringing in her ears, incredulous about the fact that Kyoshi of all people would get distracted. She had tried to defend herself, but her voice couldn’t get out: she was too busy replaying in her head the memory of how there wasn’t enough space to put her hand between the bandit’s knife and Wong’s neck. A piece of parchment could've barely fit.

Now, they’re alone. Wong is alive and well, together with Kirima and Jinpa, still having dinner and laughing, recounting all the times they’ve managed to escape death by a hair's breadth.

“I didn’t get distracted, earlier.” Kyoshi says in a flat voice, as if the mere thought annoys her more than anything else. Rangi throws her hands up in the air.

“Well then, what happened? Because that was lacking to say the least. And you’ve said maybe ten words since the fight.”

Kyoshi knows that the firebender has every right to be this bothered – they both have seen too many of their friends die, they really can’t stand to go through the same process again. Had it not been for the swift intervention of Jinpa, the end of the fight would’ve been very different.

All in all, her reserve is dumb. And vain, and dangerous.

“It was my hair,” she says in a whisper, like she’s fourteen and a servant all over again. Luckily, though, Rangi doesn’t flare up and asks her to raise her volume, maybe sensing that something’s off. “The blasts of air made it fall in my face and I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t strike blindly.” The firebender’s face is knit in thought. “I’m sure you could’ve withstood one hit,” Kyoshi clarifies quickly, “but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

Rangi answers with silence and a gaze so intense that the Avatar must turn her back on the other, busying herself with taking off her heavy headdress.

“I should just get rid of it altogether,” is the mutter that comes from her still painted lips as she fumbles with the clasps for a few, confused seconds, as it has never happened, “cut it to shoulder length. It’s useless to me anyway, just a nuisance that adds to the rest,” _the rest_ being having to sleep and eat regularly instead of using all of her living hours to beat herself up about problems she can’t solve with a snap of fingers.

Somewhere in Kyoshi lives the knowledge that those are harmful thoughts and behavior. Everybody that cares about her in her life has always tried to push away that kind of mentality, but it sneaks back like an old wound whenever she’s too tired to stop it.

Before she can get frustrated enough to simply tear the headgear away, Rangi’s warm fingers skim the exposed part of her nape. They’re quick to loosen the clasps and reverent in the careful way she lays the heavy object on the table in front of her.

Kyoshi lifts her head to look in the mirror before them. Rangi is staring right back, something unknown and strange in her gaze. The girl doesn’t take her eyes off of her as she begins to card her fingers through Kyoshi’s hair, slowly and measuredly. From root to end, with such a delicate touch that Kyoshi’s never known before, she brushes her hair.

“I love your hair,” she whispers finally, gathering it up in her hand and then repeating the process from the top. The gesture is soothing, so much that the Avatar closes her eyes. “It’s so long and it’s such a warm color. It reminds me of the wooden planks back home, how the light used to reflect on them in the early morning.”

_What an alien thought_ , Kyoshi muses. _Home, before all of this ever happened_.

“You shouldn’t have to forsake everything just to fight.” Her words are so measured – too much so, in a way that tells Kyoshi that she’s probably just a slip away from actually getting very, very upset. “You shouldn’t think about things in your life in terms of how useful they are to you in battle.”

But she kind of does, doesn’t she? Kyoshi shuts her eyes harder, the knowledge of having failed the one person she didn’t want to, of her limits regarding certain routinely thought processes too hard to bear with open eyes.

Rangi doesn’t speak for a while, but her fingers somehow do, slowly caressing the back of her neck.

“Kyoshi, you are not a weapon,” her voice is so, so small compared to how _all_ of Rangi usually is, “you have a duty to the world, but it can be carried out only if you carry out the one you have to yourself, first.” The hands in her hair halt and move to link on Kyoshi’s chest, an embrace that somehow still leaves both of them incomplete.

“Please don’t deny yourself the things you still cherish in this world. I know there’s not many of them.” Rangi chuckles, quietly. “You always did travel lightly.

“And I know how hard it is for you to admit you- _want_ , or enjoy, something. But please, at least for my sake, try and make the effort.”

_The Avatar rarely gets what they want_. It’s not strictly a matter of Kyoshi’s own distorted world views, but the ugly and scorching destiny that’s reserved for those who are born into her kind of greatness.

Nevertheless, Kyoshi’s hands lift up at the same time her eyes open, to find amber gazing at her. She touches Rangi’s hand.

“I don’t want to cut my hair,” she whispers, and Rangi’s hold tightens, then releases. Her fingers move to her hair again, though it doesn’t need to be brushed anymore.

“But it is a vain feeling,” Kyoshi adds, casting her gaze down, “and I couldn’t bear to see my friends hurt because of my vanity. I couldn’t bear to see you hurt.”

Rangi noses through her hair, unable to stop herself from snickering.

“You really are the least vain person I know. Even Jinpa checks himself out in some reflecting surface in the morning. You rarely do.” A light blush spreads on Kyoshi’s face for some reason.

“We’ll just have to tie it better. You could go for a topknot, though that’d spark some rumors back home.”

That is some thought. Rangi teaching her to make one. Kyoshi faking not being able to do it, Rangi being forced to brush her hair and put it in a topknot daily. Rangi's fingers on her scalp. _Mmmh_.

And, people in the Fire Nations talking about them. People suspecting, but not daring to ask. That really is some thought.

“Besides, if you cut it, I wouldn’t be able to do this.”

Suddenly, Rangi takes all of her hair with one hand, curls it around her fingers, and tugs to the side, leaving part of Kyoshi’s neck bare for the world to see – or, well, for Rangi alone. Her other hand sneaks up to touch her chest, right where white paint meets light brown skin, just above her collarbone, and she spreads her fingers there. Half her hand is low enough to be covered by the lapels of Kyoshi’s heavy robes.

“I like this spot,” Kyoshi’s eyes shoot from the reflected image of Rangi’s hand to her eyes, burning embers. “I like that no one has seen it but me.”

Longingly, Kyoshi wonders how to get her hand to fall lower. It’s not a long lasting question.

*

Being married, Kyoshi thinks, is heaven.

The air isn’t particularly welcoming, but surely scented with as many flowers as possible, in the Fire Lord Palace’s gardens. Rangi is at her side, and one wouldn't be overstating in saying they’re attached to the hip: nobody has had the privilege of speaking with the Avatar by herself, tonight.

After all, why would she want to? The most colossal political blunders of her life were made on her own. Rangi, on the other hand, understands completely the Fire Nation etiquette, and by being married to the Avatar she has basically risen to Kyoshi’s rank.

So Kyoshi lets her do the talking. All she does is watch the room for the foods Rangi likes best, and for fresh water instead of alcohol of any kind.

She opens her mouth only to greet, thank or bid farewell to people. And to thinly intimidate Fire Lord Zoryu, away from her wife's ears, when he’s not surrounded by his guards. If anybody notices the way his forehead knits after his short conversation with the Avatar, they don’t make it known.

Rangi does. When they’re alone, in their room, and she’s untying her heavy ceremonial boots.

“What did you talk about with the Fire Lord, earlier?”

There’s some kind of urgency in her voice, like she’s dreading the answer. Kyoshi can’t bring herself to feel ashamed.

“I was just reminding him of one of our old conversations from four years ago. Just to jog his memory.”

She can hear the gears turning in Rangi’s head as she gets rid of the boots, and moves on to the shin guards. Kyoshi is ready for bed – she’s been ready for bed for the whole day, hardly one to withstand the stifling Fire Capital heat, or the stifling political talk of the garden party, or the stifling everything that seems to permeate the entire Nation.

“Did you blackmail the Fire Lord?”

“No! Why would you say that! I would never!”

Rangi gives her a hard stare. She might be the Avatar’s wife, but she’s also a devoted Fire Nation citizen and a loyal subject to the Crown. Kyoshi supposes she deserves the truth. After all, they’ve done worse things together. Maybe.

“I slightly threatened him.”

“What!? Kyoshi!”

Rangi jumps up and climbs over her on their bed, panic in her eyes. Her hands are strong on the Avatar’s biceps, holding her down like Kyoshi might want to fly out of the window at a moment’s notice.

“That’s punishable by death, you _idiotic log!_ ”

“It is if you’re a Fire Nation citizen. I’m not.” Kyoshi shrugs her shoulders. “And you don’t know anything about it. You’re my innocent wife, roped into a life of _daofei_ oaths and underhanded methods to try and shape the world into something better. For the greater good.”

Rangi doesn’t answer, instead, she groans and lets her head fall on Kyoshi’s chest.

“If it makes you feel better, I did it to save many lives. And, well, we were all in a pinch. Also, it has been four years. I used to act a bit irrationally.”

Her wife kicks her, hard, on the shin.

“Don’t talk like you don’t act like there’s no head attached to your neck on a weekly basis.”

“Mhhm,” Kyoshi squints in thought. “But there is. There is a head, it’s right here. And it has a mouth, and it would really like a kiss.” Rangi laughs, pushes her face with one hand to try and make her shut up. “A kiss from her wife’s mouth.”

“You’re not getting one,” are the final words of Rangi as she rises again to finish undressing. Kyoshi pouts from her place on her bed, lifts on her own arms to look at her in the process.

“Not until I’m finished with this armor, anyway. You want to help?”

Kyoshi’s on her feet in less than a second.

*

“I think I finally understand why I hate this game so much.”

Kuruk’s surprised expression is really, unusually funny to the younger Avatar.

“I didn’t know you hated it. Why have we been playing it for a decade, then?” The man barks out a laugh, something that has become increasingly common for him during the last years. “We could’ve been writing poetry or something.”

“As you can imagine,” Kyoshi replies with dry humor in her voice, “my way with words is similar to my best play at Pai Sho.”

“So initially promising and then it crashes and burn because you have no patience?”

“Well, yes. Or, doomed even before I begin, as you prefer.” She shrugs, smiling. Kuruk has carved a place in her heart more than she cares to admit.

“But as I was telling you. This stupid game requires you to make a move. There’s no turn you can pass. There's no way to just stay and watch. You’ve got to move the tile, even when you don’t want to. And sometimes I _really_ don’t want to.” Kyoshi shifts the tile with a flick of her hand, like she’s pissed off at the piece of wood itself for some cosmic reason.

“Ah, you still haven’t moved on from your usual _jing_ , I see, even after years and years. You really are one stubborn student.”

“And you are no teacher of mine.”

Kuruk guffaws again, another laughter Kyoshi manages to bring out of him. 

“I guess that waterbenders could be more prone to become good Pai Sho players, after all. We alternate between positive and negative with ease, so it’s not hard to think in terms of changing strategy mid-game.” He scratched his beard, truly contemplating. “Huh. I never thought about it in these terms.”

“Some of the best players of my time were Earth Kingdom citizens, though,” Kyoshi shrugs. “I was just trying to apply the theory to myself.”

“So it’s not a valid excuse for being the worst player I’ve ever met.”

Kyoshi throws a tile at him. Kuruk doesn’t bother to wash the smile off of his face.

*

The doors that block the light from coming through slide open, revealing a tall, imposing figure on the wooden planks. Everything inside smells new – the wood has been oiled to protect it from the harsh south winds and the saltine, humid air. The light, now flowing inside the wide room, meets the metal weapons that rest on the wall on the opposite side of the room: two fans, fixed to the wooden planks, are open and shine in the light.

The others, Kyoshi knows, are stashed carefully inside the crates that lie in the corner.

“I never would’ve imagined that you’d create armed forces in your image. And I used to thing you _so_ humble.”

A wide smile spreads on Kyoshi’s face as she turns to see her wife stalking towards her. Rangi is still dressed in her nightgown – something that concerns the Avatar, since the firebender hasn’t let down her guard in such a way in years. Decades, maybe. Even during their wedding, a small ceremony, she insisted that both of them wear some sort of armor. Kyoshi was used to it, she didn’t mind.

Kyoshi fakes a sigh, turning her attention to the room and to the fans in front of her. She takes them off the wall to inspect them.

“You’re never going to let this go, mh?”

“Never. It’s my revenge for how you always like to remind me of the table business from _a billion years ago_ ,” Kyoshi snickers as an answer.

“I promised to you, Rangi. For all our lives.” She quickly closes the metal fans in a series of quick, short attacks. “Besides, you threw a table down the balcony into the royal palace gardens. You can’t expect me to forget about it.”

Rangi leans on the open door. The sun that rises from behind makes her look like some sort of spiritual vision from a poem, and the crisp breeze that enters the room makes Kyoshi inhale cold, cold air. She’s never felt better.

“Then don’t expect me to stop teasing you for this. Even though everybody knows that you don’t like people worshipping you.”

Kyoshi continues in her fan testing movements, opening and closing them, slicing the air, fighting against it by pushing with the flat surface of the metal. She’s actually moving towards Rangi, but the Avatar guesses that she has already caught on that.

“That’s not entirely true. I love it when criminals and politicians know me from the stories and legends. It’s much easier to convince them of whatever we need.”

Kyoshi has landed in a beautiful low stance in front of her wife, low enough that Rangi can look down at her. She lifts an eyebrow.

“There’s a difference between worshipping and fearing. It’s common knowledge, too, that you love to terrorize people.” The Avatar rises to her full height, and her wife’s gaze with her. “But the share of people who fear you is definitely much bigger than the worshipping one. And the number of people who know you’re neither a god nor evil incarnate is even smaller.”

Kyoshi smiles and puts away the fans in her sash.

“I only need one to know, really.” Her column, her center. Earthbenders are known for being as strong as the bearing wall of a well-built house, but for Kyoshi the truth is that without her pillar she wouldn’t be able to bear a fraction of the world’s weight on her shoulders. Rangi is the focal point of everything in her life.

The firebender lifts both her eyebrows now, a sign of surprise at the other’s words.

“Don’t think you’re forgiven for literally breaking up a piece of the continent. We’re never going to hear the end of this from everybody in the entire world.”

“Maybe beating me up would make things better?”

“Make things better, no. Make me feel better, for sure.” Just as the turns, supposedly to go and change into some more appropriate clothes, Kyoshi grabs her from behind, lifting her in a very crude and downward unfair _daofei_ lock.

“Kyoshi!” She can only shout, hoping that no one in the village is up yet to hear the embarrassing performance.

“I don’t want to wait for you, beat me up now.”

“You’re insufferable,” Rangi grits out as Kyoshi shifts her weight, managing to hold her in her arms. The firebender swats her on the head. “I can’t fight, or do _anything else_ for that matter, in this. In case you haven’t noticed, and you have, I’m naked under this flimsy thing.”

Kyoshi simply smiles her dumbest, youngest, crooked smile. They’ve both grown so much but that secret, blinding show of teeth hasn’t changed one bit.

“It’s barely dawn. And no one wanders this close to the mansion anyway.”

A wide range of color makes its way on Rangi’s face, the last reserve about this absolutely uncouth and reckless behavior melting away at the way Kyoshi’s fingers sink into the flesh of her thighs.

“You’re just lucky I love you _so_ much,” are her last words as she plunges her hands in Kyoshi’s long, flowing hair to bring her close in a kiss.

*

The sun is scorching on Kyoshi’s dark clothes – they seem to be trying to catalyze all the heat, all the light, on the tall woman, like she’s an obelisk.

Lek’s place on the ground has been covered by all kinds of weeds and flowers, while a much fresher mound of earth rests nearby. Through her bending, the Avatar can feel the water contained in the dirt drying up quickly, forming a column of humidity just above it, another obelisk of some sort. Fitting for a waterbender.

“How many of your friends have you had to bury?”

Next to her, Lao Ge lets out a sound that resembles a sigh, an unusual show of real emotion from the assassin.

It’s strange, Kyoshi thinks, but she can’t help being somewhat relieved. For her, it’s the first one of her friends that hasn’t died a violent death. Kirima passed peacefully, old by _daofei_ standards, after half a life of enjoyable tales as one of the Avatar’s companions.

“To tell you the truth, not many. Not as close as this bunch, anyway.”

Wong and Rangi are nearby, a short distance from the duo – being the two most emotional members of the group gives them the advantage and curse of understanding each other in that way, quietly sniffling and letting out wails of despair gritted through their teeth.

Kyoshi breathes humid air, deep in thought, a scowl on her face, as the water evaporates from the dirt in front of her.

*

To say that Koko is their only child would be a disservice to all the ones they’ve found and somehow saved in their travels across the world, but surely Koko is the luckiest, and unluckiest, amongst them – being the daughter of the Avatar and a famed Fire Nation Lieutenant was never going to be easy, and both of them knew.

But that is not the real problem, these days. Koko has grown to be strong-willed and kind, like her mothers.

“Mom, please.” Koko’s voice comes to Kyoshi’s ears as she climbs the stairs of their home on the Island. “You brought this on yourself and you’ve got no right to complain.”

Rangi’s answer takes the form of an incredulous, nonsensical sound. Before she can launch herself into one of her usual discipline-and-respect-for-elders tirades, though, Kyoshi slides the door open.

“I am here. Please don’t bring the house down arguing.” Two pair of eyes, one fiery amber and the other dark green, stare at her. She stares back, condescendingly. “Like last time.”

Koko scoffs in the same exact way her mother usually does.

“We didn’t- okay, you’re never going to listen to our side of the story anyway. Just do something about this old lady so I can peacefully be on my way.”

“This old lady is still your mother, Koko. Please.”

“Now _you’re_ calling me old too?”

Both mother and daughter snicker. Rangi doesn’t look happy. She uncomfortably moves on the bed, trying to sit up, but her face twists in a pained expression. Even as her face pales, she manages to grit out threatening words.

“I’m going to get up as soon as possible and beat both your asses.”

Kyoshi sits on her legs near the bed, lifting her hand to place it on Rangi’s forehead and clear it of the locks of hair that have fallen out of her topknot. Raven black is peppered with grey these days, but Kyoshi can’t say she doesn’t like it: as if to prove a point to herself, she reaches out and places a kiss on Rangi’s nose. Koko watches, patiently.

“I’ll be happy to help you with that. What happened?”

“She insisted on carrying the water jugs by herself like the stubborn goat gorilla she is and broke her back or something.”

A small smile, impossible to stifle, splits the Avatar’s face. She turns to look at her wife, who lifts an eyebrow as if to challenge her to say something. Koko looks at the interaction and throws both her hands up in the air.

“Well, if you’re going to be like that, I’m not staying here to watch.”

Kyoshi laughs openly this time, raising one hand and placing it on her daughter’s shoulder to try and stop her, but Koko takes it in her own hands and squeezes it briefly.

“I promise we’ll behave.”

“You always do, mom. And I always end in physical pain by watching you being all over each other.” She gets up, not waiting for her mother to speak again. “Besides, the boys want to try and ride the unagi tonight,” she stops shortly by the sliding door, “someone’s gotta show them how to do it. Love you both, bye!”

That leaves the two women together, alone. They sit in silence until the hurried steps of their daughter stop pounding on the wooden floors of their home.

“Is it irresponsible of me to say I’m glad she’s able to waste her days like this?”

Rangi hums, her hand sneaking to grab hers.

“Parents should always strive for a better life than theirs to give their children,” Rangi whispers, something she’s told her countless times as they were raising their daughter. Kyoshi’s mind runs back, almost fifty years before. It’s useless to try and remember what their lives looked like when they were Koko’s age – some horrors, you can never really put them out of your mind.

“I would take down the outer walls of Ba Sing Se if it meant a happier life for one of you.”

Rangi’s smile is one that somehow breaks her heart after making it whole: the thin lines pulling on the side of her eyes, the tenderness that slips through the kind curve of her lips, something she would’ve reluctantly shown years before. They really are getting old.

“And I would do the same. But tonight my request for you, o mighty Avatar, is that you fix this old lady’s back.”

Kyoshi chuckles, gestures her to turn over on the bed, and helps her to comply.

“Are you really going to kick my ass after this?”

“I am.”

“Then I’ll be as swift as possible.”

*

Not one for immortality, Rangi passes quietly as Kyoshi watches over her in bed. At her request, Kyoshi buries her not in the island where she was born and where her mother, too, is buried, but on Kyoshi Island. In Yokoya. Koko weeps enough for both of them as Kyoshi’s oldest, darkest rage burns deeply in her chest.

Barely four, terrible days later, Fire Lord Zoryu dies, too.

Kyoshi, not a being made for mourning and yet one that has been forced to go through it too many times for her liking, leaves immediately to go and assist in his oldest son’s coronation.

*

It starts out as a selfish, stubborn thought, like many others Kyoshi has had in her life.

_The only way you can have a job well done is if you do it yourself_ , is what she had often told herself during her stay as a servant in Yokoya – that mindset brought her to work more than many others, and to truly trust only few people in her life.

The Earth King is close to his demise, she muses from her place in the courtroom, close to him but not the closest. Closest are, instead, his advisors, as loyal and as greedy as every other one in the world.

Kyoshi is old, but still quite in shape. The void left by departed companions of all kinds has been functionally filled by the knowledge that, right now, there can be no leverage against her. Untethered, as some enlightened monk would call her. They had spoken of some levitating guru, pushing her to try and reach that same potential, but Kyoshi wasn’t listening. Her mind was focused on the Fire Nation golden hairpin sewn into her heavy tunic, right on her heart.

An ugly cough comes from the Earth King, and all the eyes in the room run towards his small, dull, old figure, all eyes save for Kyoshi’s. Hers are trained on the advisors, who sigh with relief in the moment the King waves his hand, laughing, as a way to tell them not to worry for his health.

She can see the panic in their eyes, though. They truly hope that the Avatar will die just before the King, to try and grab the throne for themselves. After all, she’s nearing a century of life.

As she drinks quietly from her cup, an invisible smile paints itself on her lips. She won’t give them that satisfaction.

*

The sun disappears behind the waves, on the flat horizon, and Kyoshi blinks, unmoving, looking out of the window.

Today marks the sixty-one thousand, one hundred and thirtieth day of the Kyoshi era. For many, it is inconsequential, but for her – starting tomorrow, she will have lived more days without Rangi than with her. The painful clench that grabs her heart is not as burning as it once was, after all, it has been almost eighty years, but it’s the routinely feeling of not being whole that leaves her with such a weight.

She has lived for one hundred and sixty seven years. If it wasn’t for the fine work of the Fire Sages, she wouldn’t be so sure of that, either, since the years start to muddle up in the same way the days do.

There is a knock on the door and, before she can answer, it opens to reveal a man dressed in light blue clothing, with white furs on the hems.

“Darok,” she says, quickly banishing he thoughts from her head and the tears from her eyes. “I was waiting for you.”

The man bows slightly, the tray in his hands preventing him to go too deep. He lays it on the desk where Kyoshi usually reads the more important (or personal, though she doesn’t get many of those these days) letters directed towards her. It comes as some sort of warning, a way to tell her that work is forbidden for the night. Not that Kyoshi was intending to do any of that.

“I was worried, since I didn’t see you eat all day.” Even just three months ago, this kind of speech would’ve been rare from him. Kyoshi has managed to pull a more assertive tone out of him, during their time together – just like Rangi had done with her, more than a century and a half ago. Still, he remains a healer, and a kind, too kind, man.

The words pain her more than Kyoshi lets on. She lifts her tunic quickly, uncovering the ruined skin of a bad, infected wound she received in her last encounters with some particularly skilled human traffickers. Darok doesn’t flinch, but that’s to be expected. As he works, Kyoshi eats quietly, in small bites.

It’s only as the pain subsides, and as the bowl gets emptier, that the healer lifts his eyes from the wound and glances at Kyoshi’s hands: many, many years have passed, enough that there’s not a soul alive that remembers the face of the despicable man that gave her those scars but her. As a healer, Darok should know a lost case when he sees one.

But then again, he is a very kind man.

The touch of another human on her hands is so foreign that Kyoshi can’t stifle a gasp. Darok examines her scars with the efficient eyes of a doctor, clinically but not cynically.

“Don’t bother,” she says in a low voice, “these are much older than you are.” She doesn’t mean to sound paternalistic, but the man doesn’t take offence in her words anyway. “Besides, I don’t have the luxury of change.”

Darok hums deeply, a warm sound, and squeezes her hands. She looks at him through her eyelashes, tired for the first time in years.

*

“No.”

“Aw, come on, Kyoshi,” her mentor’s voice and behavior resembles that of a child asking her mother for permission to stay out late. Kyoshi thinks of Koko, and her chest burns briefly. “Don’t you think it’s time to rest?”

Kyoshi huffs, taking her eyes away from the Pai Sho board that lays before them.

“First Yangchen, and now you. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you two truly hate my work.”

“Don’t put the two of us together,” Kuruk’s eyes darken for a second. “I’m not saying it for spiritual reasons or something. Yangchen is worried about balance and about just where you learned this kind of trick.” It is often puzzling, how Kyoshi _is_ all of them, and yet no one of the past Avatars know of her _daofei_ oaths, or past, or acquaintances. “I’m not.”

His hands move a tile with ease, like it’s natural to him to dispense wisdom and win at the damned game in the same time.

“I care for you, Kyoshi. You have done so much for everybody. You have shaped the world to be as calm as a day at sea with no wind. I want you to rest.”

Everybody wants her to rest. The warriors back at the Island want her to rest. The newly appointed Governor of the Island wants her to rest. Koko wanted her to rest. Rangi used to want her to rest, almost two hundred years ago. Darok wanted her to rest. In fact, it was his last order as her doctor, friend and only solace in the last decades, before he closed his eyes for the last time.

“I cannot. There’s unrest in the Fire Nation. Fire Lord Zoryu’s ancient project of getting rid of the clan system is almost complete, but some still resist. Should something happen, I need to be there.”

Kuruk sighs.

“There’s always unrest in the world, Kyoshi, but that is no wisdom for you. You’ve felt it on your skin for so long now.”

In the Spirit World, she wears no gauntlets or face paint. Her scars are as visible as the creases on her face.

“But you must let go. Every Avatar before you has done so. Nobody has had the privilege of choosing when to depart.” That is the whole point of waiting. Kyoshi is waiting for a good enough moment. “Besides, being dead is nice.”

That stuns her, for the first time in a hundred years.

“What?”

“You heard me correctly. To be dead means not to have any real power over the living. It means you can take off your chainmail and help the next one grow and flourish as we all did before you.”

_The only way you can have a job well done is if you do it yourself,_ she thinks, a quiet irritation blooming in her chest. She thinks of Kyoshi Island, of the Earth Kings and Queens. She thinks of the Dai Li. She thinks of all the years the world has wasted before she was found. The Yellow Necks, the Gravedigger.

Kyoshi moves another tile.

*

“Prosperous news! The Fire Lord is getting married.”

“Mh. Congratulations.”

Leha, the quiet Air Nomad nun that was assigned to her by the Eastern Temple, reminds Kyoshi of Jinpa in his earlier days, when he used to wait for an answer before entering in rooms and didn’t talk back at her. She’s been particularly resistant, though, to her numerous attempts to gauge some sort of strong emotion from her.

At least Jinpa was easily indignant. As Kyoshi turns her head, unadorned by her infamous headdress, she’s still standing in the high grass.

“What are you still doing there?”

“I’m… trying to understand if that was sarcasm.” Kyoshi lets out a snorting laughter at that. “Or if you actually want me to send a messenger hawk.”

Maybe she is making progress, after all. The Avatar gets up from her Horse stance. She doesn’t need the training, but Kyoshi likes to keep the stance for long minutes just to feel that same familiar, old burn in her legs. Besides, if Rangi was there, she’d say she needs the training.

“Eh, they’ll send an invitation or something soon enough. It’s no use chasing gossip, even if it is true.” In just a couple of steps, she covers the distance between them. “Do we know who she is?”

Leha shakes her head, clenching her robes in the unforgiving wind. Certainly, an airbender arguing with the wind is a sight to behold, even for a two hundred and twenty eight years old woman.

“I lost count of the generations. Is this Zoryu’s… grand-grand-grand-child?”

The nun shakes her head, again.

“Fire Lord Azoai passed three years ago.”

“So he’s the grand-grand-grand- _grand_ -child.” Kyoshi curses in her head. How could she let a generation pass her up like nothing? “I’m getting old.”

_‘You think?’_ are the exact words painted on the woman’s face, though she’d never dare to speak them out loud.

“You know, some legends used to say that Avatar Kyoshi can read minds.”

Leha yelps. Negative _jing_ and all, she flees on her staff, making a suspiciously twisted detour towards the open sea – probably the effect of the harsh south winds, but maybe of the embarrassment, too. Kyoshi laughs out loud.

“Ah, you would’ve liked her,” she tells the wind. “Of course, you would’ve bickered day and night. But you would’ve liked her.”

A year or so after the wedding, comes the news of a pregnancy.

*

The setting is the same one that has accompanied them in the last two hundred and twelve years. Kuruk, too, hasn’t changed by a hair: the only one that has, after all, is the woman that sits, just barely hunched, with her legs crossed and in deep thought.

Her fingers have become nimble in shifting the pieces on the wide, flat board. When she decides on a course of action, she’s swift to follow it with her movements.

Today, though, just like the last thousand, Kyoshi moves slowly. He green eyes chase after the movements of her hands, deliberately moving at a relaxed pace, seemingly incapable of focusing on anything else outside the game.

The man sitting on the other side of the board has become younger than her many years before. He doesn’t take his eyes away from the game either, save for the few times he’s glanced at the woman in front of him – a bittersweet ache coursed through him when he did, so he’s stopped doing so about two hours ago.

Kyoshi finally moves her piece, and Kuruk presses his lips together.

“Twenty turns or so,” the woman speaks before he can, “is what would take me to win.”

A long, long glance is his temporary answer. Kuruk assesses the board like he would with a painting or a tapestry, with some sort of admiration, like this specific artwork is a unique piece that never before has existed before his eyes. In some way, it never has. He smiles his most wonderful smile.

“Why, my friend. I believe you are right.”

The next of their games is played not so long after. Kyoshi’s eyes are somewhat greener and her shoulders somewhat lighter, without the world weighting them down.

**Author's Note:**

> rok and sok really punched me in the face and rangshi did, too. i love korrasami more than anything else but these two are a very, very close second!
> 
> anyway if you're on twt im bee_thecowboy, i don't post much but i'd be glad to follow other atla/lok accounts!! we can have fun together and cry about the fact that we won't have more rangshi content in our lives. YES IM INCREDIBLY SAD ABOUT IT
> 
> title comes from my tears ricochet by taylor swift! thanks for reading if you've gotten here!!


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